NBC Universal Media
Next fall, NBC will air The Biggest Loser to its Thursday night lineup, giving it the 8 PM slot. Once football season ends, the network will put its only true hit from this season, The Blacklist, at the 9 PM slot on Thursday. Why is any of that news? Because it means that for one of the few times since 1983, NBC will not air a block of sitcoms during the 8 - 10 PM timeslots.
NBC's Thursday nights has been the home to some of the biggest hits and most influential sitcoms in history, and while the network's programming strategy might make business sense it's hard not to feel a little sad at the end of what became one of the medium's few constants.
The Beginning
The Peacock first experimented with the idea of grouping sitcoms on Thursday during the 1983 - 84 season with a rotation of shows that included fare like Gimme a Break and We Got It Made… but it also included a pair of building blocks that would provide the basis for what was to come.
The following season in 1984, NBC debuted its first classic lineup on Thursdays with holdovers Cheers and Family Ties, paired with The Cosby Show and Night Court. The formula of two smart family sitcoms during the 8 - 9 PM hour and then two slightly more adult oriented sitcoms between 9 - 10 PM wasn't new — CBS did the same thing throughout much of the '70s — but the quality of the four shows was so good that it was hard for the grouping not to standout.
NBC's success on Thursdays — particularly with The Cosby Show, which at its peak was averaging nearly 30 million viewers a week — propelled the network to its first standalone win in the season ratings since Nielsen started keeping track in 1960.Cheers and The Cosby Show anchored the night for the rest of the decade until a little show about nothing came along to keep the ball rolling.
In its early days, Seinfeld bounced around the NBC schedule in search of a home, sometimes airing after Cheers. When the Ted Danson sitcom finally ended in 1993, however, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David's creation was ready to take over.
Seinfeld and Friends
Seinfeld, Mad About You, and starting in 1994, Friends became "Must See TV." For most of the next decade, Friends and Seinfeld were such strong ratings winners that they could carry a variety of weaker shows (Caroline in the City, Suddenly Susan, Veronica's Closet, etc.) that followed them. The pair of New York-based sitcoms became so iconic that Friends generated a fashion sensation as women rushed to have their hair styled like Rachel and Seinfeld fans quoted the show so much that phrases like "Master of your domain" and "No soup for you!" became part of the cultural lexicon.
When Seinfeld called it quits, the Cheers spinoff Frasier moved back to Thursday to stabilize the night for a couple of seasons until suitable replacement could be found. NBC found that replacement when it turned to a show about a group of friends far different from Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry and company: as Friends started to wind-down, the night became the domain of Will &amp; Grace. The sitcom about a gay man and his female best friend (Eric McCormack and Debra Messing), along with their two flakey cohorts (Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally), provided the network with another hit to build around.
Beginning of the End
When Friends came to a close, NBC's Thursday lineup went through a period of flux. The first signs of trouble began when Scrubs had difficulty finding a larger audience, despite being well received by critics. With ratings dropping, The Apprentice spent time in the 9 PM Thursday slot, as did Deal or No Deal.
The comedy lineup reemerged, however, in 2007 when Tina Fey's 30 Rock joined The Office, My Name Is Earl and Scrubs to form one more stellar block of sitcoms. By 2009, Community and Parks and Recreation had joined The Office and 30 Rock, but as smartly written as the group was, ratings never quite rebounded fully.
By this past season, when only Community and Parks remained and were grouped with the now canceled Welcome to the Family, Sean Saves the World, and The Michael J. Fox Show, the writing was on the wall. With not much more than The Big Bang Theory, CBS easily defeated NBC's offerings. With CBS' announcement that they would air NFL games on Thursdays in the fall, it became clear that NBC was going to have to counterprogram to keep from being trampled.
At some point, NBC lost its touch and patience for building sitcoms like Cheers, Seinfeld, and The Office... none of which was an immediate ratings success. That's too bad, but instead of lamenting the network's inability to come up with suitable sitcoms, it's better to sit back and marvel at the decades of comedy success that NBC managed to pull off. It was a heck of a run while it lasted.
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AMC
This weekend was a kind one to Don — it saw him win the lead in a Burger Chef pitch and entertain an unprecedentedly agreeable visit from Megan. But Mad Men has no interest in this brand of kindness, using the façade of the perfect weekend to showcase just how vacant everything in the man’s life seems to be. Well, almost everything.
The real victory, beyond occupational leaps or oases of marital harmony, is that long-awaited smile from Peggy: the establishment that once again, these two are in this wicked run together. Coming to form at the head of such a (deceptively) smooth episode after a seasonal throughline of potent animosity, the ultimate achievement at first feels like a bit of a forced utility, rushed into production in order to satisfy Mad Men’s seven-episode semi-season.
But a well-placed scene from Joan exemplifies just what Peggy’s smile truly means, to Don and to us. Back in New York after a successful stay in Detroit, Bob Benson awakens to the callous face of homophobia — his Chevy rep, likewise a gay man struggling to hide his identity from friends and colleagues, winds up in at the courthouse after an attempted sexual encounter with an undercover cop. Bob retreats further into his own folds of secrecy after seeing just how unforgiving the world (or maybe just New York) is to men like them and springs a marriage proposal on his beloved pal Joan. Sharper than he, and just about everybody on this planet, has given her credit for being, Joan rejects the arrangement, identifies Bob’s true desires, and spells out the fact that they should both wait for true, organic happiness instead of forcing the fates in their favor.
Again, her diatribe comes off a little heavy-handed for the likes of Mad Men, at least on first viewing. But the sequence is masterfully situated between Peggy’s initial smile at Don, who has joined her in the otherwise empty office on a Sunday afternoon — him lamenting his dead-from-the-neck-up marriage to Megan and her writhing in the inadequacy of her Burger Chef pitch and, more so, the fact that she has nothing else to care about — and their devolution into eye-welling, throat-quavering admissions of desperation for one another, at least at this point in time.
AMC
Just as we might have felt at the forefront, Peggy’s grin is rather forced. And that’s because as uninterested as Mad Men is in giving its characters perfect lives, it is even less interested in giving them perfect moments. We have been waiting for Peggy to hinge herself to Don once more; Don has been aching for this emancipation from her contempt. But nobody has suffered more from this period than Peggy herself, manufacturing a connection to Don over his espousal of lessons that seem like they should have come at the very beginning of her career (“Here’s what you do when you have writer’s block…”).
Unlike Joan, Peggy is willing to push her way into the embrace of a hand-crafted happiness. She is willing to redefine what “family” means — both for herself and her Burger Chef clients, centering her revised pitch around the reappropriation of the word — in order to make her days a little more livable. But unlike Joan, Peggy has something in the man kneeling before her. The man who insists on a dance to the radio’s broadcast of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”
Both victims of the job who have seen everything else in their lives suffer its merciless bite, they are reminded this week that neither one is on this course alone. They just happen to be traveling in opposite directions. In the Benjamin Button story of Don’s corrosive decline and Peggy’s bumpy ascent, this week might well mark their “meeting in the middle” moment. A stark reversal to the series favorite “The Suitcase,” we see Don returning in part a heavy favor owed to Peggy: validation. Validation of the idea that all this time spent huddled over a desk, spilling guts into the work, relegating oneself to the parameters of a business card might very well have meant something to somebody. He could instead be teaching her that a life might be better off spent anyplace else, but in Peggy Don has somebody else that could never comprehend such a fallacy.
The episode is arranged in such a way as to excel on two levels. At first, we see everything play out perfectly: Don reclaims his position in Peggy’s heart, she snags her ingenious pitch, and the both of them, and Pete Campbell (having scared his daughter, accosted his ex-wife, and disappointed his Angelino girlfriend), form their own brand of family over a Burger Chef meal. But Mad Men, and this episode about would-be perfect moments, is better than perfect: it’s human, knowing that the turn of true value isn’t Don, Peggy, and Pete finding “the family they were seeking all along” in one another, it’s the admission that what they’ve been seeking all along might no longer exist, if it ever did. But, unlike Joan, they’re willing to put up the front if it means not having to dine alone.
Episode grade: A, with bonus points for Pete Cambell merrily shouting "I'm drinking rum!"
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DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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Sean Hayes' U.S. TV series Sean Saves The World has been cancelled by bosses at America's NBC network, just weeks before he was due to shoot the final episodes of the season. The former Will & Grace actor landed his own self-titled sitcom last year (13), but production has now been shut down before the end of the run.
Production on the show, which features Hayes as a divorced gay father, ended on Tuesday (28Jan14) with four of the total 18 episodes still left to shoot, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
A number of familiar faces were slated to appear in the final episodes of the first season, including Portia de Rossi, Guy Pearce, and Hayes' former Will & Grace co-star Megan Mullally.

WENN
Sometimes, music and movies just aren’t enough for the public when it comes to celebrity consumption. In those situations, things are taken to the stage for some hardcore dramatic renderings.
For the 2013-2014 Broadway season, a new musical inspired by Tupac’s music will be hitting Broadway. Kenny Leon, the director of Broadway shows like Fences and The Mountaintop, will be directing Holler If Ya Hear Me, an original anti-violence story based on Todd Kreidler’s book of the same name, set to Tupac’s music. Also, hitting Broadway soon will be a musical based on Channing Tatum’s semi-biographical Magic Mike, because who doesn’t want to see a bunch of half-naked studs singing and dancing on a stage.
Here are a few other celebrity-inspired musicals that have taken over Broadway.
The First (based on Jackie Robinson) The First was a baseball musical which, believe it or not, is actually not an oxymoron. Inspired by the success of the baseball musical Damn Yankees, 1981’s The First centered on Jackie Robinson’s first year playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers as a second baseman. Robinson definitely deserved to be celebrated, as he was the first African-American to join the MLB, but the musical only lasted for thirty-seven shows. Although the reviews for the show weren’t exactly fawning, critics got to get a few good zingers in, courtesy of the title. Examples include: “[The musical] is not exactly hitting a home run” and “The First never gets to first base” (*gong*).
Marilyn: An American Fable (based on Marilyn Monroe) Since her death in 1962, Marilyn Monroe has been one of the most exploited celebrated stars in the entertainment world. Whether it’s mediocre movies on her life or hideous tattoos on the forearms of starlets (here’s looking at you, Megan Fox), the overuse of Monroe most likely has her rolling in her grave so much that she’s making herself chapatis by now. Originally on Broadway in 1983, this musical claimed to be an “authorized” version of Monroe’s life – even though the musical had a happy ending. Someone should probably let the producers know that 5 minutes after the happy ending, a couple of Kennedys walked in and…
Lennon (based on John Lennon) Debuted in 2005, the Yoko Ono-produced Lennon was essentially a John Lennon tribute extravaganza that focused on his life, Yoko Ono, his music, Yoko Ono, his influence, and Yoko Ono. The show was notable for not making any mention of the Beatles, and Ono justified this by stating that the musical was about Lennon, not the Beatles. Of course, the only reason why anyone even knows or cares about John Lennon is because of the Beatles, but hey, whatever works. The musical also mysteriously left out any mention of Lennon’s 18-month fling with his and Ono’s personal assistant May Pang during the time that he and Ono were separated. But it is about his life, promise!
Coco (based on Coco Chanel)In her first and only Broadway musical, Katherine Hepburn played Coco Chanel in 1969’s Coco. Although critics weren’t too impressed with Hepburn’s musical prowess (hint: she had none) and gave the musical mediocre to unimpressed reviews, the show was a financial success, selling out nearly everywhere it was featured. Coco looked at Chanel’s return to the world of haute couture after fifteen years of retirement in 1953 Paris, with her arch nemesis being an insanely stereotypical gay designer trying to take down Chanel’s designer realness.
Taboo (based on Boy George)Taboo was based on the friendship of Boy George and legendary club promoter Leigh Bowery against the backdrop of the hedonistic New Romantic scene of the early 1980s. Premiering in 2002 in London, the musical was apparently so awesome to Rosie O’Donnell that she had to have a piece of it. She partnered up with Boy George to bring the show to Broadway, but after getting some pretty derisive reviews (even during rehearsals!), the musical eventually came to an end after 100 shows. Despite reportedly losing her entire $10 million investment in the project, O’Donnell is still interested in bringing the show back to Broadway again.
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Although Smash tanked at the end of its two-season run, NBC isn't fully ready to dim the lights for the show's immensely talented actors. Megan Hilty has snagged a role alongside her fellow Smash co-star Sean Hayes on NBC's upcoming fall comedy Sean Saves The World.
Emmy-Winner Sean Hayes appeared briefly in Smash's second season as Terry Falls, the whimsical yet self-conscious actor, who starred in a play alongside Hilty's character Ivy Lynn. But now, it's Hilty's turn to tag along on Hayes' show. The blonde bombshell will replace Lindsay Sloane on the new fall comeday as Sean's BFF and colleague, Liz, according to TV Line.
Sean Saves The World is a comedy about a single dad tackling parenting with not the best luck. Sean, who is a recently-divorced gay father, juggles caring for his witty daughter and attending to his time-consuming job at the demands of his zany boss. Fingers crossed the powers-that-be at NBC will throw a few musical numbers into the upcoming comedy just for fun.
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On this week's episode of Three's Company, one character leaves the room just in time for another character to reveal something provocative to a third character, which eventuates in a wacky, sexually-themed misunderstanding. Later on, somebody walks in on two people making love, and a really gregarious dude uncomfortably hits on his heterosexual coworker. Hilarity ensues.
Oh, no, that was all on Mad Men, but you coulda fooled me.
Even more off the wall than this season's recent drug-addled ep is the sexually pervasive "Favors," which has just about everyone trying to sleep with just about everyone. Peggy tries to sleep with Stan. Ted, subtly, tries to sleep with Peggy. Ted's wife tries to sleep with Ted. Sally Draper's problematic friend Julie tries to convince Sally to sleep with Arnold and Sylvia Rosen's son Mitchell, who, in turn, looks pretty keen on sleeping with either of them (despite the fact that he's a good five years their senior). Pete's mother, who thinks that Pete is sleeping with Peggy, tries in her own right to sleep with her burly Latin nurse. And of course, the kicker of the lot: Bob Benson tries to sleep with Pete.
Let's back the hell up. First, the Don / Sylvia / Sally / Mitchell / Julie (that gal's trouble) Debacle:
When Don walks in on Megan tending to the sunken eyes of a long-haired, free-wheelin' hippie type, he learns that this young man is actually the son of Arnold and Sylvia Rosen, and that he's been assigned 1A (which, for the lot of us who have very fortunately grown up in an era past the draft, is apparently quite bad) for the Vietnam War. So Don, claiming to be channeling the father inside of him (that same father who admitted just a few weeks back to never feeling any love for his children), calls in a few favors to get Mitchell absolved from service. He attempts this with a client during a big pitch meeting, much to everyone's chagrin, but eventually lands the help of the noble Ted, who enlists the help of an Air National Guard buddy to ensure that Mitchell will never see combat.
And of course, it's all so that he can sleep with Sylvia again. And he does. And a visiting Sally, prompted into the Rosen's apartment to retrieve a compromising note left there by her nuisance of a pal Julie (seriously, Sally, just go hang out with Glenn again), walks in on the romantic union of her father and the lady from Freaks and Geeks. If Sally's image of Don hasn't yet deteriorated beyond repair, it does here. The young lass is shattered. And Don's malfeasances have finally stepped beyond his containment.
The only issue with the dramatism of this twist is just how little Don does indeed value Sally or her image of him. I can't imagine that Sally losing her sense of her father as a god should mean all that much to Don. Thinking of another AMC drama about crumbling father figures, Breaking Bad, we find a corrupt and criminal man who still needs his son to love and admire him. But has Don ever really needed that from Sally, or do his cold sweats here just come from the threat of her revealing the incident to Megan?
Now, the far more interesting Pete / Pete's Mom / Pete's Mom's Nurse / Bob / Peggy / Ted / Ted's wife / Stan / Whoever that Girl in Stan's Bed Was Calamity:
If you'll recall, a few weeks back, the ever generous Bon Benson took it upon himself to suggest to Pete the services of a military nurse named Manolo for his dementia-stricken mother. When Manolo and Mrs. Campbell pay a visit to SC&amp;P this week, we learn a few things, via a covert conversation between the delusional woman and whom she believes to be Trudy (but is actually Peggy): the two are sleeping together.
Okay, we don't know if they're actually sleeping together. But we know that Mrs. Campbell thinks they're sleeping together. And that's enough to rile Pete up to give Manolo the axe, after he finds out during a liquor-fueled dinner with Peggy and Ted. A dinner with sexual tensions flying every which way: Ted still likes Peggy, right? Even though he has a loving wife and family, suffering from his lack of attention at home? And now there are hints that Pete harbors some affection Peggy's way, too? And maybe not entirely unrequited? Except for the fact that she's also totally willing to sleep with Stan, as she offers to "make it worth his while" if he high tails it over to her apartment in the middle of the night to kill a rat? But he can't, because he's actually in the middle of sleeping with someone else? And all this is made all the more complicated by the fact that Peggy shared kisses with both Stan and Ted a few weeks back?
And, oh yeah, she had a baby with Pete?
Remember that?! Because until Pete's mom, all out of sorts, made reference to the child that Peggy/Trudy and Pete/Pete have together, I had all but forgotten. Those two have a kid.
But we can shelf that in favor of the Bob Benson reveal for which everyone has been waiting. Pete brings his outrage over the Manolo situation to the attention of Bob, who, in his sensitive, philosophical manner, identifies Mrs. Campbell's feelings as natural and understandable. Manolo cares for her, makes her his top priority, shows her nothing but kindness. As such, she can't help but fall for him. This message, delivered with a gentle nudging of Pete's knee with his own, cements a new bit of information about Bob Benson.
At surface value, we could take this to mean that the rosey-cheeked do-gooder is simply gay. And maybe he is. But that's not a deep enough cut for the most bizarre character to grace Mad Men since Kinsey went all loony. Bob has tossed his unparalleled kindness toward just about everyone at SC&amp;P: Pete, Joan, Ginsberg, Harry Hamlin. I don't think that homosexuality was meant to be the big reveal here, but a dark, pressing, all-consuming need to be loved. Really loved. By anyone.
And so, as he is rejected by Mr. Campbell, Bob retreats back into the pitch black cavern of his psyche, extending his golden heart to everyone at his company until someone finally returns his affections. Or until something... bad happens.
And since it's Mad Men, we're going to bet on the latter.
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Ryan Murphy's The New Normal and musical drama Smash are the latest victims of TV cuts in the U.S. Network bosses are currently choosing which series to continue and which to axe, and the Glee creator's gay family comedy is one of the unlucky ones.
The NBC show starred Justin Bartha and Andrew Rannells as a same-sex couple who have a baby via surrogate, but it won't be taken to season two.
Smash, which featured Katherine McPhee as a performer fighting to make her way on Broadway, has also been cancelled by bosses at NBC, leaving Debra Messing, Anjelica Huston and Megan Hilty out of a job. It has run for two seasons and featured cameos from Jennifer Hudson and Bernadette Peters.

If Molly Ringwald — be she poor and unpopular or rich and revered — had her eye on some dreamboat, you can bet your letterman jacket that John Hughes would stick the two of 'em together in the end. The pair would share a kiss over a flaming cake or outside their incarcerating high school, just in time for the credits to roll and our eyes to tear up. That's the Hollywood ending. The more or less satisfying, albeit sometimes offensively flimsy, conclusion that brings two physically appealing young white people together. Forever. It doesn't matter how little substance backs their teenage love affair, nor how disturbingly misguided their romance might in fact be (remember Can't Hardly Wait? We're supposed to believe she falls totally in love with her stalker mere hours after her very first inkling that he even exists?), audiences just eat up these glitzy, amorous bonds.
It's a time-tested tradition throughout mainstream cinema. Sure, not all movies opt for the schmaltzy, ice cream finale, vying instead for something bleak, bittersweet, and embedded in realism, but we're moreover guaranteed a presence of that Hollywood send-off throughout the industry's rom-com output. Except, for some reason, when it comes to gay movies. Take Tribeca's G.B.F., a bubbly, colorful, pithy high school comedy, centering on the newly outed student Tanner (Michael J. Willett) and his closeted best friend Brent (Paul Iacono). When Tanner becomes the apple of every popular girl's eye, each of the school's queen bees coveting the glimmering accessory of Gay Best Friend, it puts a strain on his longtime camaraderie with Brent, leading — in classic rom-com fashion — to a fight, then a reconciliation, then a kiss, then an infatuation. And if this were your average heterosexual high school movie, you'd likely wind up with a romantic union to tie the story together and warm the audience's hearts. You'd see an eternal adhesion Tanner and Brenda, or Tanya and Brent. It'd be goofy, neglectful of real world consequences, and surface value ecstasy.
All of that would fit just fine into G.B.F., which, despite being sweet, progressive, and insightful at times, is just your ordinary candy-coated high school romp. But for whatever reason, a Hollywood ending is avoided, despite a very Hollywood beginning and middle. The movie wraps with Tanner and Brent agreeing that they're better as friends, dismissing their obvious attraction to one another (or at the very least, Brent's attraction to Tanner), and carrying on perpetually with their platonic affection.
On the one hand, this is reassuring. At least the movie recognizes something rare for show business: just because these two characters both happen to be gay, that doesn't mean they "belong" together. But in this chewing gum reality of G.B.F., these two lifelong best friends do seem to belong together. At least no less than Molly Ringwald and Michael Schoeffling or Ethan Embry and Jennifer Love Hewitt or Alicia Silverstone and her Paul Rudd step-brother. In movies as bright and brimming as Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, and Clueless, the Hollywood ending makes sense — the same can be said for the equally fast-paced and sparkly G.B.F.. So why, then, don't we see the credits roll over a long anticipated Tanner/Brent kiss?
Why, in fact, are we so rarely inclined to see this kind of ending in movies about gay couples? Although the film industry is gradually inviting more films about homosexual relationships toward the mainstream, they all seem to vie for the bleak and bittersweet... or just bitter. The most famous entry to date is Brokeback Mountain, which chronicled the passionate love of cowboys Heath Ledger (who totally ended up with the girl in 10 Things I Hate About You) and Jake Gyllenhaal (who totally ended up with the girl in Bubble Boy... sorry for bringing up Bubble Boy), ripping the enamored men apart and killing the latter prematurely. Following in the same vein, we have romantic dramas like Weekend, A Single Man, Shelter all shoot for sorrow and sobriety. While films like these, about straight and gay romances alike, are imporant and valuable, it feels like something is missing. If there is something to be gained from the endings of Clueless and 10 Things, then there would be something to be gained by a saccharine intertwining of G.B.F.'s heroes.
But that's not what we get, despite all the signs pointing to it as the logical shot for the film's final moments. Is it simply that Hollywood is still afraid of tackling a gay romance under the guise of a mainstream movie? Even when presenting a movie that is about being gay and celebrates open-mindedness and tolerance and disparages objectification, we run into this aversion. And it's frightening — if G.B.F., a movie tailor made for the sort of Kat-and-Patrick wrap-up, is afraid of or otherwise opposed to this kind of closer, then where on Earth are we going to find it?
Sure, you'll find no shortage of filmgoers who can't stand the rom-com genre. It's fake, vapid, superficial. But it's a tradition, and one that seems to make everyone else happy. These movies, in delivering shiny stories as thick as cardboard, foster the belief in true love. They sell romance in the simplest of forms, begging viewers to buy into the mentality, if only to pony up the dough for the next big picture release. But capitalistic intentions aside, the same process should be afforded to same-sex rom-coms. The same sort of flimsy, chocolate-chomping "true love" should be touted in regards to the likes of Tanner and Brent. Gay moviegoers deserve to see themselves in the same light as the Ringwalds and Silverstones, deserve to be fed the same line of Fluffernutter as their straight counterparts. Movies like Can't Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, and everything by John Hughes might be hokey and ill-fit for realistic expectation, but they serve a purpose: they purport something people want to believe in. And that needs to happen for the G.B.F.s of the world, too.
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My mother always told me that there are three things you should never talk about at a party: religion, politics, and money. I think that my dear mother is going to have to add a fourth thing to that list: Anne Hathaway. If you want to divide a room, just bring up the actress' name and watch the venom fly. People do not like Anne Hathaway. They use the word "hate" a lot when they talk about her. And their hatred is vehement, like Itchy's for Scratchy, like the Hatfields' for the McCoys, and Taylor Swift's for every man who she has ever talked to since her 15th birthday.
But just where does this Anne Hatha-hate come from? I never quite understood it. I always thought she was quite lovely — I love The Devil Wears Prada, and the one time I ran into her in a Manhattan gay bar (she's been known to hang out with her gay brother and his gaggle), she was quite charming. So where does all the vitriol come from?
"She's got this theater kid thing where she adopts the mood of every situation she's in — rude and bawdy on Chelsea Lately, poised and 'classy' at the Oscars, etc — but wildly overcompensates every time," says Richard Lawson, a friend and former colleague who now covers entertainment for The Atlantic Wire, who adds that his feelings stop short of "hate." "She always seems like she's performing, and her favorite act is this overstated humility and graciousness. I've known theater kids my whole life. I was a theater kid my whole life. She is the epitome of the bad kind of theater kid."
The "theater kid" sentiment was the reason I got from a majority of people I talked to about why they loathe this particular girl. (I found numerous willing subjects through a Twitter dragnet, most of which are just average Joes and not media or entertainment professionals.) Tommy, 28, from Brooklyn says, "She is the epitome of the annoying high school drama dork. An air of self importance masking all that boring." Megan, 30, also from Brooklyn, says, "Anne Hathaway is a theatre kid whose enthusiasm and earnestness was never reined in, and now she has an international stage from which to project from her diaphragm."
But what is so wrong with being a theater kid? Isn't Hollywood full of people who have wanted to become actors from a young age? What makes Anne specifically hatable? "I should have clarified that it's not just that she was a theater nerd," Abbey, 27, from Dallas says. "I know plenty of people who were into theater that I would be thrilled for them if they made it. Anne just has something that makes her unlikeable to me. I liked her in Devil Wears Prada and I did think she did a good job in Les Mis, but I did not care for her in other roles. I think she is miscast a lot."
I asked what the difference between Anne and another notorious "theater kid," Lea Michele, was and my coworker Anna Brand quipped, "A spray tan." ZING! Lawson sees it as something a bit more measured. "Anne Hathaway is better at hiding her blind, show-kid ambition," he says. "It's still there, but she's pretty practiced at covering it up. Whereas it oozes out of Lea Michele, probably because she's been playing a version of herself on TV for the past four years."
NEXT: Is Anne just too boring?
So maybe it has little to do with the sort of activities Hathaway enjoyed before her 17th birthday after all. "I think she's 100 percent inauthentic and insincere. Nothing she says or does feels real to me," says Sarah, 32, from New York. "And if it is real, she's even worse because she comes across as entitled, boring, and the last person I would ever want to share a meal with." Now, that's two people who think she is boring.
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But being a wet rag is the least of Ms. Hathaway's problems. Time and again, people raised questions about her authenticity. Either she seems like she's too enthusiastic or not enthusiastic at all, she's too humble and boring or she only pretends to be humble and boring, she's too much of a theater kid or she's trying to hide that she is. It all boils down to the fact that people don't seem to believe her. They don't trust the persona that she is putting out in public.
It seems like awards shows are doing her no favors. When asked what Anne's worst moment was, many Hathahaters named her performance at the Golden Globes (maybe because it was still fresh in their memories). "The Golden Globes speech takes the cake. Like, seriously? We should all be making fun of her," says Hollis, 36, from New York. Megan also agrees that the speech was awful. "I didn't buy it and she was incredibly annoying. I wanted her to stop ... and secretly kept hoping the music would play her out sooner."
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One of the common gripes about Hathaway is that she makes everything all about her, even when trying to come off as sweet and humble. And that was certainly present at the Globes when she got up on stage with the rest of the cast for Les Mis' big win and used the time to continue her acceptance speech. And during her Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech, she did herself no favors by calling the award a "lovely blunt object that I will forevermore use as a weapon against self-doubt." The rehearsed self-depreciation just drips off that phrase like an ice cream cone in July.
Okay, now even I'm starting to understand it. When Anne Hathaway is smiling next to (a stoned?) James Franco hosting the Oscars, she does not come across as someone with a lot of self-doubt. So when she says something like that (or "blergh," which many people also thought was her trying too hard), she seems false. But maybe that's just us projecting? Maybe we're thinking that someone talented and beautiful and rich can't have so much self-doubt — can she? She would like you to think she does.
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Not only is this Anne-amosity unstoppable, but it seems there is nothing that Ms. Hathaway can do (short of getting a new face, new voice, and new personality) to sway it. Ameya, 30, from New York has a rehabilitation plan for her image that he says would make his hatred go away, "She needs to lay low for a while (pull a Gwyneth Paltrow), grow her hair out, maybe start popping out kids with the new husband, take some great paparazzi shots to show us she's human/normal. I'd love for her to come back on the scene with a killer role and surprise us."
Like most intense emotions, hatred of Ms. Hathaway is nonsensical and will probably change with time. Maybe she can wait it out like a bad thunderstorm passing over a boat. But there is one thing that is certain: when she inevitably wins her Best Supporting Actress statue (and haters would lead you to believe that she's already dusting off a place on her mantle), the fury will erupt all over again.
Follow Brian Moylan on Twitter @BrianJMoylan
[Photo Credit: Hollywood.com Illustration]
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